The folks over at MTV Multiplayer have some keen eyes for videogame covers, that’s for sure. They happened to notice that all the boxes for the Wii versions of EA Sports’ games (marketed under the “All-Play” brand) are very different from the artwork on the non-Wii versions. Not only do the cover athletes seem to have more celebratory or upbeat poses, they also all happen to feature wide smiles. Curious, Multiplayer asked EA Sports president Peter Moore about this recently, and he said it was “something [he] wanted”:

Brett Favre was the best example. The intensity for Favre on the [non-Wii ‘Madden 09’] cover — for me, it didn’t feel right for the experience I knew we were developing on Wii. So I said to the team everybody should smile on the Wii package. It embodies the experience. If you played ‘Madden’ on the Wii and you’re playing with guys with the heads the size of five watermelons, it’s hard not to smile. We wanted to be able to deliver that experience on the packaging.

I don’t know about you, but when Brett Favre points at me with a smile on his face, in a pose akin to the one I’m holding in my avatar, I feel like a badass -- a champion, even. Hell, the man has led the New York Jets to an 8-3 record and a spot atop the AFC East, a remarkable 180° turnaround for a team that was 2-9 at this point a year ago. Who knows? They might even get to the Super Bowl (where they’d surely be defeated by the defending champion New York Giants).

Still, big head mode or not, this seems rather silly to me. It’s a sports game, so why not have an “action shot” on the box, “intensity” and all? Sales of the Wii versions of EA Sports titles aren’t up that much this year, and I don’t think that a grinning cover athlete helps the situation -- I posit that gamers who are looking for a simulation sports experience may even be put off by this, and it could lead them to pick up the PS3/360 versions of games like Madden NFL 09 instead. What do you guys and gals think?

[Via MTV Multiplayer]